These academic vocabulary terms are essential for students to thoroughly own

- to understand them even

under stressful testing situations.

For example, one of the verbs at fourth grade is "interpret." It is one thing for a student to be able to parrot a definition to you, but another to truly understand what to do when they see a test item that says "Interpret this graph."

Spurred to action by Sprenger's book, I now have these words on my desk, right where I do my lesson planning. I stare at them every day, and hope to become so in tune with them, that I harmoniously add them into instruction at every opportunity. You can download them here.

Always looking for a visual, tactile way to engage students with vocabulary, I tried something new today. One of the classes I co-teach is using a mountain climbing theme this year, so today we started our hike up

Mt. Vo-CORE-bulary. The critical verb that applied to today's lesson was "interpret." Students discussed the meaning of the word, practiced applying the word, and made flags to add to their mountain as they begin their climb to the top. We will continue to add other CORE academic terms as we move toward our peak. (We used sticky labels and toothpicks.The front side of the flag has the term, the back side has synonyms for the term.They can easily flip the flag around to refresh their understanding.)

Check out this new tech tool for reading! Neil Goldman, a high school special education teacher, has developed a site that allows you to enter complex text (or websites) and then "rewordify" it. The tool looks up all the difficult words immediately and replaces them with easier vocabulary. There are three different settings so that the user can choose how to view the altered sentences based on their preference.

I can see immediate application for students with reading difficulties, students who are English Language Learners, and anyone who might be trying to read text with vocabulary that is new to them. It's easy to "turn it into an app" by adding an icon to your home screen that links to the webpage. Students will then be able to quickly access it without remembering the url.

In Shakespeare's MacBeth, King Duncan says "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face." While the meaning here is that the human face can hide all types of treachery, perhaps an innovative teacher can use student faces to gather accurate information!

Try this idea that I picked up during our National Train-the-Trainer Institute in Chicago last week.

1. Give each student a paper plate and a writing utensil.2. On your screen, present 4 or 5 multiple choice questions, one at a time. The question can have 2-4 choices, but each choice will be linked with a shape. For example:

"Students should be able to use cell phones in school." a. yes - use triangles for eyesb. no - use ovals for eyes

"I know all I need to know about internet security."a. yes - use a square for a noseb. no - use a pentagon for a nose

These types of questions would lead to the development of an opinion face. You can also design content review questions such as:

Which of the following is not necessary for growing plants?a. sunlight - use suns for eyesb. water - use tear drops for eyesc. salt - use a square for eyesd. nutrients - use ovals for eyes

As the students are drawing their faces, the teacher can wander the room glancing at their creations and gathering formative assessment data.

Thanks to the teachers who shared this strategy (whose names I have unfortunately lost track of!)

And thanks to Alicia, one of my teaching partners, who suggested that are students could quickly draw these faces on their individual whiteboards and hold them up for

The National Train-the-Trainer Institute for Co-Teaching that Works was filled with energy, ideas and laughter. My head is spinning with all of the new relationships I formed this and the practical ideas I have to improve my own co-teaching, as well as my co-teaching workshops.

One of the topics that generated intense interest from participants concerned resistance to co-teaching. Clearly, not everyone is on board with the idea! Unfortunately, it is usually the general education teacher who is depicted as being the resistant partner. So, for fun, I decided to create a simple animation to show that sometimes the resistance comes from the specialist. Enjoy!

BTW - Go!Animate is a very easy animation tool that allows you to use templates or design from scratch, with a free or paid version. With the free templates, all you have to do is type in dialogue (up to 10 exchanges) and publish it. Takes just minutes!